Print Publishing
The linear and costly supply chain model To gain a broader perspective on the opportunities and challenges presented by digital textbooks, it is useful to first understand how the publishing supply chain has been affected by the move towards digital products. Until recently, the traditional textbook publishing supply chain was a very linear (and costly) model. According to The Future of Publishing's blogger Thad McIlroy, the publishing industry has always been plagued by two key problems:
The Internet changed much of this, removing print from the equation as the only output option and, subsequently, eliminating the need to physically move books from point A to point B. |
At the product-level view, innovations such as desktop publishing which made page layout much more efficient than the traditional typesetting approach, has now evolved one step further, offering the capability of exporting to web mark-up languages (HTML and XML). This innovation allowed books to then be produced in a portable, digital format very quickly and cost effectively.
Whilst the opportunity to harness the new technologies and channels that emerged with the Internet have been plentiful, many publishers have been slow to react. Even today, many publishers continue to "treat their digital production, distribution and marketing as something related to print". As a result, the textbook as an innovative digital product has taken hold rather slowly, often being sold as supplements to the printed product or as a “value added” bundles. |